| Name | Title | Contact Details |
|---|---|---|
Renee Nivala |
Executive Director, Financial Reporting | Profile |
Angie You |
Chief Executive Officer | Profile |
Northwest Bioanalytical is a Salt Lake City, UT-based company in the Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotech sector.
Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is a chronic, life-threatening disease that affects millions of people worldwide. In the United States, 30,000 new cases are estimated every year with half of those cases diagnosed in young children. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the patient`s immune system goes awry and attacks and destroys the pancreatic beta cells. Beta cells are responsible for regulating blood sugar (glucose) levels by producing precise amounts of the essential hormone insulin. The discovery of injectable insulin in the 1920s changed T1D from a uniformly fatal disease with a life expectancy of months to one that could be carefully managed for decades through multiple daily blood glucose measurements and insulin injections. However, insulin injections are not a cure and patients face a lifetime of difficult disease management and serious complications including kidney failure, blindness and nerve damage. Despite nearly a century passing since the discovery of insulin, insulin injection remains the only treatment available to patients. Semma Therapeutics was founded to develop transformative therapies for patients who currently depend on insulin injections. Recent work in the laboratory of Professor Douglas Melton led to the discovery of a method to generate billions of functional, insulin-producing beta cells in the laboratory. These cells develop in islet-like clusters grown from stem cells. Initial preclinical work in animal models of diabetes has shown that transplantation of these cells are sufficient to control blood glucose levels. This breakthrough technology has been exclusively licensed to Semma Therapeutics for the development of a cell-based therapy for diabetes. Ongoing research at Semma Therapeutics is focused on combining these proprietary cells with a state-of-the-art cell delivery and immune protection strategy that can protect these cells from the patient`s immune system and allow the beta cells to function as they do in non-diabetic individuals. Implantation of the beta cell-filled device has the potential to provide a true replacement for the missing beta cells in a diabetic patient and would not require patient immunosuppression. Semma Therapeutics is working to bring this new therapeutic option to the clinic and improve the lives of patients with diabetes.
Stembanc is a Chardon, OH-based company in the Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotech sector.
AuraSense Therapeutics (AST) is a biopharmaceutical company developing first-in-class therapies based upon its proprietary Spherical Nucleic Acid (SNA) gene regulation and immune modulation strategies. AST is leading the translation of SNA constructs as innovative medicines with a core focus on debilitating diseases with limited or no treatment options. AuraSense Therapeutics' uniquely engineered SNA™ constructs possess attractive biocompatibility and versatility as therapeutics and hold great promise for combating the most life-threatening diseases, including many forms of cancer, infectious disease, and skin conditions.
Zynerba (NASDAQ: ZYNE) is dedicated to improving the lives of people with rare and near rare neuropsychiatric disorders where there is a high unmet medical need by pioneering the development and commercialization of next-generation pharmaceutically-produced cannabinoid therapeutics formulated for transdermal delivery. Cannabinoids interact with specific receptors throughout the body to produce pharmacologic effects, primarily in the CNS and immune systems. Transdermal delivery has the potential to reduce adverse effects associated with oral dosing because it allows the drug to be absorbed through the skin directly into the bloodstream, avoiding the gastrointestinal tract and lessening the opportunity for GI-related adverse events. It also avoids first-pass liver metabolism, potentially enabling lower dosage levels of active pharmaceutical ingredients with a higher bioavailability and an improved safety profile. Zynerba`s lead patent-protected product candidate in clinical development is ZYN002: ZYN002 is the first and only pharmaceutically-produced cannabidiol (CBD) formulated as a permeation-enhanced gel for transdermal delivery. Through a proprietary combination of our pharmaceutically-produced CBD and permeation enhancers, we believe we can effectively deliver CBD through the layers of the epidermis and into the circulatory system. The company is currently assessing ZYN002 in Fragile X syndrome and certain adult and pediatric refractory epilepsies. These include adult refractory focal epilepsy and developmental and epileptic encephalopathies (DEE), a heterogeneous group of rare and ultra-rare epilepsy syndromes associated with severe cognitive impairment and behavioral disturbances.